Twitter's Million Dollar Gift

Published October 05, 2009 @ 02:36PM PT

On Friday, Sean Stannard-Stockton reported that Twitter had made a number of well-known social entrepreneurs "suggested users" when new people sign up for the micro-messaging service. It may seem crazy, but I might even go so far as to say that this is a more valuable "donation" from Twitter to these social innovators than if the company had donated a straight cash $1,000,000.

Before you holler that I'm crazy, let me make my argument.

First, the idea that the "suggested user" spot is extraordinarily valuable is not new. Twitter has grown like crazy. Last year it grew 422%, for a while at the beginning of the year it was growing over 1300%. It's now seeming to have peaked in terms of growth rate, but is still getting bigger. As those new people come online, they get invited to follow "suggested users," some 350 supposedly interesting people. Many of them are celebrities.

The New York Times wrote this summer about the extraordinary power that "suggested users" command, sparked in part by Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis' offer to pay $250,000 for a place on the list. In his estimation, the placement would eventually net him 2-3 million followers, and would be an incredible marketing channel for his business.

I think a place on that list is worth even more than that $250,000. Since Friday, the new social innovation addees to the list such as FORGE founder Kjerstin Erickson (@kjer) and the Acumen Fund (@acumenfund) have added an average of about 15,000 new users each. At that pace, they'll be adding 50,000-100,000 new followers per week. Pretty soon, they'll be at 250,000 followers, then 500,000, then...

The question is, what's the value of a follower? There are some limiting factors. Many people sign up for Twitter but then never use it. On the flip side, some people follow so many others that it's unlikely that a tweet from one of these "suggested" social entrepreneurs would ever actually be seen. TechCrunch, a tech blog that became a suggested user earlier in the year actually compared traffic to demonstrate how much less valuable a follower was if they found the nonprofit through the suggested user section vs. a follower that was organically generated.

I wonder how different this might be for a nonprofit vs. a blog like TechCrunch. Nonprofits are in the business of inspiring and compelling donations, volunteerism, or other gifts. For a lay user who just joined Twitter, coming across someone like Kjerstin Erickson who can give them interesting things to read and meaningful things to do might be a far more compelling hook into the site than a site promoting its own written material.

What this does, effectively is put the power of distribution directly in these social entrepreneurs hands. It's not a guarantee how they can convert it - it takes a lot more than an "in" to push someone to action, but it creates an incredible channel. It may not be worth a million dollars, but then again, the power of distribution and the self-control this would give nonprofits just might be.

What do other nonprofits think? A million bucks or becoming a Twitter suggested user. What would you take and why?

(Photo: respres)

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Comments (6)

I'd take a million bucks. We currently don't have the time or manpower to use a Twitter suggested user spot to its fullest but the one million bucks...we've got more than 1 million great ways to spend that.

Posted by Michele Rodriguez on 10/05/2009 @ 08:01PM PT
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I'd take the million bucks as well. That said, I do think the Twitter spot has value, just not the same as $1M cash.

If you're a NGO that looks for individual donations, it could be worth a million dollars in donations over time - with an investment of your own resources (staff, supporter attention, etc). Maybe $200K of investment over 3 years to make that spot generate 1M in 3-5 years - contingent on the right emotional sell.

If you're not looking for individual donation, nor need mass volunteers, the spot is much less valuable. So the $1M now would go a bit farther.

Posted by Wayan Vota on 10/06/2009 @ 10:14AM PT
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You'd think so, but it's more than just a numbers game, it's a quality game.

Over the years having spent millions upon millions of dollars driving online media many lessons learned.

One rule is targeted traffic trumps massive untargeted traffic.

It's like the days web sites talked about (many still do) "hits", which is a meaningless metric. Give me monthly unique visitors, time spent on site, and conversion rate to sale...and we can build a multi million dollar business. I can get you 250,000 legitimate unique visitors to any web site for $300 buying very, very cheap media online. Because it is so incredibly untargeted, very few will convert to revenue.

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Posted by Mark Grimes on 10/06/2009 @ 11:31AM PT
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Mark,

Couldn't agree more. Quality beats quantity. In fact, I would say that RSS or Email subscribers are even more valuable than Twitter followers, especially email subscribers.

Why? Becuase email subscribers (double opt-in of course) not only want to get your message, its delivered to them. They don't need to access an app that may or may not be central to their lives. Email is central to everything.

Posted by Wayan Vota on 10/06/2009 @ 01:01PM PT
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LOL I just got this tweet:

AshokaTweets Woohoo! We were added to the Twitter Suggested Users list overnight and have gained 4K+ followers since then, amazing. Hello everyone :)

Posted by Jemma Alarcon on 10/07/2009 @ 09:14AM PT
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I do agree with everyone here that says its quality not quanity that counts. That being said I don't think 4K+ followers is a bad thing, but they will have to really work to do something with them.

What would actually be helpful is if twitter asked what topics people were interested in and THEN suggested people to follow. A lot more focused and that could be worth a $1,000,000.

Posted by Nelson de Witt on 10/08/2009 @ 08:18PM PT
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Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.